Dealing with Severe Pain and Illness, INTJ-style

Friday October 21, 2016

Last weekend I was driving home from a wedding, a 3-hour car trip. At the beginning of the drive, something felt off, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I felt vaguely uncomfortable and nothing seemed to help—water, more heat, more cold, nothing.

After an hour and a half of uncomfortable driving, I started to feel nauseated. Something wasn’t right in my abdomen. I asked my wife if she could find something that I could throw up in, if I needed to.

“Umm,” she replied, “if you feel like you need to throw up, shouldn’t I be driving?”

We both laughed.

I pulled over to let her drive and use the bathroom. Almost as soon as I emerged from the bathroom, a supernova of pain began to erupt from my insides. We got back on the freeway, an hour and a half from home. I began to moan and shift in my seat.

I could stand only twenty minutes of that and looked up the nearest emergency room.

By the time I checked in, my pain was at an 8 out of 10. I shifted in my waiting room seat and moaned some more. Fortunately I only had to wait about ten minutes.

The intake nurse took my vital statistics—blood pressure, temperature, pulse. At that point, she looked surprised.

“Do you exercise a lot?” she asked.

“Yeah. Is my heart rate pretty low?”

“Yeah, it’s at 40,” she said.

“That’s normal,” I said. I tried to hold back a smile. I had worked hard for moments like this by losing 35% of my body weight, or 100 lbs. (see before photo and after photo), and despite the pain, it felt like I had just been handed another little trophy.

The uplift didn’t last long, as I was soon left alone in a room, at which point my pain went to a 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. I have never yelled and moaned like that before. I was crying, my legs were moving around constantly, my hand gripped the hospital bed handrail like I was attempting to crush its metal frame.

“Ah, we call that the ‘kidney stone dance,’” said my new nurse, as she walked in and introduced herself.

So I had kidney stones

This episode lasted almost a week. I hit 10 out of 10 on the pain scale on multiple occasions. Different locations, same pain level.

Here are my INTJ notes on the topic.

Things that helped

Coping with Pain

The instinctive methods that I just did without thinking

Gripping something and trying to squeeze it very hard

Laying down

Moaning

Slapping myself on the head (??? This one was weird but helped a couple of times)

In extreme pain, the following non-instinctive methods helped, ranked most-effective to least:

Distracting myself by asking questions, asking for information

It was annoying when people didn’t cooperate. One nurse said, “I know why you’re asking me, this is great. It’s gonna be OK.” Then she went back to her work. Give me the information then!!! Let’s have a discussion!!! I need this! LOL

Slow, calm breathing and visualization

One nurse said, “I see you’re doing Lamaze breathing! Great idea.” “Let’s call it Kung Fu breathing,” I said. She laughed but I learned it from the Chinese martial arts, not from a Lamaze class! Geez.

Important: Breathe out longer than you breathe in! Otherwise you will hyperventilate. I started to hyperventilate and remembered this advice from Sifu Richard Hone, my martial arts instructor of long ago. (R.I.P. Sifu Hone! Amazing guy)

I visualized the sun inside my chest, slowly growing larger and larger with warmth extending to my extremities, and warm sun hitting and warming large, round, flat river rocks. This worked pretty well overall and helped distract me.

I exhaled loudly by pursing my lips and blowing hard through them. Again, something I was taught in Kung Fu, and it worked well.

After doing this for a minute or two, I’d attempt to go completely silent and motionless. Exhaling very slowly through my nose, not making a move. Just to see how long I could do it before I had to move again.

Reciting things I had memorized

I started to recite inspirational lines from a Japanese film.

Probably sounded weird to the nurse but I was desperate. And it did help a bit.

This was a temporary distraction but didn’t help as much as I had hoped.

Interestingly the thought of “more” was extremely depressing at this time.

I have never wanted to die less than when I was in such extreme pain, which fascinates me. A 10 made every last consideration of death completely flee. Is there some continuum—the better we have it, the more likely we consider death an option? Or something like that? Is that why we go to the movies to see James Bond tortured while we relax?

All of the above were surprisingly ineffective against level-10 pain. I thought they would help a bit, but they were simply coping mechanisms and hardly did a thing except provide some distraction.

Coping with absence from work

People I work with were really understanding

“Why are you even emailing us?” they said.

“Get some rest!” they said.

Still, I was out for four business days and I knew there were things we couldn’t ignore.

It helped to work when I could.

At first I wanted to avoid work, and that was OK. I didn’t think I could handle it at the time, and I was probably right.

But the thought of work just piling up got really annoying.

I did some work and felt better about it.

So I did more work, when I could. I’m still glad I did.

Coping with the threat of another kidney stone in the future

I did a ton of research here. It all helped.

I even researched and pondered my research methods.

Google is almost worthless now. Plus, you have no idea who’s gathering information on your health profile as you use the search tools. I tried my normal DDG for this reason and it was even worse, as I suspected, but it was worth a try.

Asking a friend who’s a rheumatologist was very helpful. He sent me medical journal articles.

I thought about the different medical materials to which I have access through my library; I’ll probably look deeper into those.

It was pretty easy to conclude what caused my problems: Tons of oxalates. Just one look at my recent eating habits and how many nuts I’ve been eating, how much spinach, etc. made it very easy to guess.

However, it seems smarter to cut back a bit on those and start e.g. drinking more lemonade and taking magnesium citrate to help dissolve any stones, than to just cut out all or most oxalate-rich foods.

As I did research, I took notes.

Notes are huge and really help me take my discoveries further.

Without my notes, I tend to think in circles sometimes, continually going back to the same conclusions.

Even social media start to get really boring after 3-4 days, no matter how full your feed is

Youtube was incredible

Great War series

Niche topics of interest; retro computing

I watched so many “Irish people eat _____” videos…extremely comforting humor, not sure why.

Pretty sure my Youtube feed is going to be really weird for a while.

Anything enjoyable was done in a not-so-deep way.

This is important for me. I keep it at a very shallow level—once I start to feel any boredom, I move on immediately.

I believe this is related to extraverted intuition (Ne) and I think it can really help an INTJ in pain or when trying to relax. If used properly—i.e. not so many deep dives into single topics.

I basically took a bath in all these gifts while I worked through the illness, because I knew they were my gifts and I knew they’d probably help me. It really did help.

People were understanding but I’m glad I did work when I could. Staying as organized as possible was very helpful.

So, if it hits again, I’d like to think I’ve learned some important lessons.

For now though, I am going to work really hard to make sure there is no next time.

[Note: This post is mostly information-oriented and is not big on e.g. thanking people who helped me or noting their own coping methods. But I did get a lot of really helpful assistance from others and am thankful for it.]

Hi, I’m Marc Carson. This my psychology blog, where I write about Jungian type theory, typology, and type development for INTJs. I focus mainly on the INTJ personality type, though a lot of people of various types visit to learn about their INTJ friends and family members.

All types are welcome here, and I don’t believe that any personality type is better than the others.

Aside from my main day job as a website development business owner, I also own a life & career coaching business. I am certified in the assessment of psychological type and administration of restricted psychometric instruments by the Breckenridge Institute. I’m also a member of APTi, the Association for Psychological Type International. I have given presentations on personality type to large and small audiences.

If you’re interested in expanding your INTJ gifts, read my new book, Gifts of the Intuitive Theorist: 300 INTJ Strengths to Try. It ought to be a valuable investment if you’re looking to expand your potential and discover new strengths, or recover from burnout and develop a more enjoyable life. A sample PDF is available, as are some production notes on putting it together.

Coaching for INTJs

I offer career, life, and performance coaching for INTJs. If you are ready to accelerate your personal growth, or just need to regain control of your life, get in touch.

My coaching business contact information and intake form are available at the Marc Carson Coaching website.

The study of personality type has transformed me, literally and figuratively. I lost 100 pounds, over 35% of my body weight, by applying the principles I learned during my study of psychological type.

After reaching a healthy weight for the first time in my adult life, I realized a new level of happiness created by deep psychological change, rather than weight loss alone. From that time forward, I began to apply what I learned to other areas of my life. The result has been a fascinating journey toward the discovery and application of my strengths.

Get in Touch

If what you find here is useful to you, I’d love to hear about it. If you’d like to see your INTJ question or favorite topic covered here, let me know. My Email Address is: Marc@MarcCarsonCoaching.com